I brought along a handsome used $125 folding
(to fit in the van, and to spite the airlines' criminal deterrents)
Royce-Union bicycle. At each destination, it was the first thing
unloaded and the last thing loaded in.

photo
by pete krebs

Amsterdam

Emerging from the Central Station and 17 straight hours of
advanced modern travel-torture, I can easily count 400 bicycles
locked to racks along the front of the building. Every single one is
a beat-up old, black - actually a few now appear to be owner-painted
- upright one-speed. Around the corner of the building, 200 more, and
back around the other end, another 200, and these are all at the
Station's endless bike-racks. There are still another 200 in view
parked higgledy-piggledy all over. A thousand bikes to welcome my
one, returned to the lands of its manufacture.

OK, I'm mistaken, they are not all old, for here comes a mountain
bike. In the course of our week in Amsterdam, I'll count a total of
five (out of 10,000?) mountain bikes, two of which appear within
seconds of this first one, ridden by the only 2 cops (gunless, of
course - one a woman, the other with a pony-tail) we'll see in
Holland. There are 50 times as many cheap folding bikes (like mine)
as mountain bikes, and in a mad variety of models - mainly of German
or Austrian manufacture, it seems like, and with English
brand-names.

Brands that have folding-mechanisms identical to my Austrian-built
Royce-Union's (a hinge on a swivel, tightened down with a fat nut)
are: Arrow, Unis, Jumbo, Adriatic, and Superklasse.

Later, I'm told that the more valuable bikes are never left locked
on the street. Theft is so prevalent a cyclist will use 2 or even 3
U-locks in addition to the stylish circular lock built-in behind the
seat-post of almost every Dutch bike.

As I said, the vast majority of Dutch bikes are black and look at
least 30 years old. The ones that aren't black are owner-painted.
About one out of four bikes are what Americans call "girls' bikes",
with a lowered top-tube presumably to accomodate skirts and dresses,
and here referred to as granny bikes, the most noticeable differences
being that the top-tubes are always an elegant circular arc, and it
looks like as many boys ride them as girls.

The style of riding generally dictated by these black upright
bikes you could call "the schoolteacher" - efficient, rhythmic,
evenly paced, sitting up as in a straight-backed chair.

Quite close to the way I ride my adapted Royce-Union. Call me
eccentric, but under professional supervision I've rigged up this
little bike with a single handle-bar, extending the stem straight up
to where it ends in a little tiller at chest-height. The tiller has a
hand-brake for the front wheel, and there is another brake for the
rear wheel right beside my left hip. It's a congenial choice for the
narrow cobbled streets and sudden humped-up canal bridges of
Amsterdam.

In all of Europe, it draws fewer looks than a day in downtown
Seattle. (All the coming-up young intellectual-property robber-barons
there will one day learn how to unbug their eyes.)

There are more mopeds than motorcycles here, and what there are of
the latter are all quite low-cc.

Every so often is what must be a group bike-rental - swarms of
tourists on bright yellow velocipedes.

There are frequently cyclists who sing as they ride, and this
points up the immense qualitative difference in the larger picture:
the virtual absence of competition with motor vehicles here.

My first trip to the Van Gogh Museum is deflected by a massive mob
of tourists, so i turn into a side-street and find a kindergarten
playground full of children playing with an amazing variety of
unusual pre-bikes and kiddy-bikes - they start 'em young here.

The first work-bike ( it pushes a large cargo-box) I see is a
recumbant (a low-slung seat with high pedals), but this is a rarity.
The more usual work-bikes are infinitely more ruggedly-built than
anything in the U.S., feature a great wooden box large enough to
carry a washer & dryer, have a major emergency brake, and are
marvellously maneuverable. I am fortunate to help our new friends
Ramon and Eric deliver the modular-stage (!) to our performance-venue
on a pair of "boxfiets", I think that's spelled right, pronounced
"box-feets".

This wholesale painting of bicycles must represent the most
wholesale autonomous citizen eradication of corporate advertising in
the
world.

Every 3 blocks in Amsterdam there is a canal. It's the Venice of
the North - who knew? And the canals frequently feature canalbikes
- a la Central Park Lake. On the third day, I have the most
exciting experience of witnessing a collision between two of these
vehicles.

Last but not least, in the park there's a Royce-Union folding
bike, the twin of my own, that seals the connection between bikes and
music: it has a large plastic dinosaur with Garfield attached, and a
set of panniers holding on one side a big battery, and on the other
an amplifier, from which extends a cable leading to a didjeridu with
its butt sitting in a child's painted shoe, with Smurfs and a faux
Cabbage-patch doll appended in turn to it, and a single bass-string
running up its length, being played not altogether incompetently by a
very small boy with a toy drum-stick - for alms.

Deutschland

Suddenly, at the hilltop university campus above Siegen - mountain
bikes. 60% of the bikes chained up outside the student union are
upscale mountain bikes - and not a one as old as 99% of Dutch bikes.
There are 3 bikes pristinely painted in solid colors: violet, yellow,
silver - no brands or decals remaining - awesome.

In Nuremburg there is a free weekly municipal bicycle-repair
workshop in progress, directly adjoining the youth-club we are
unloading our equipment into. Down the driveway is an elderly grey
steel structure the size of a bus-shelter that looks like it's built
out of cross-country skis. It's a bike-rack: you run your bike up a
steep, lipped, ski, and lock it practically vertical.

This is where I see my very first ever cyclist with a cell-phone,
and here is also the most meticulously-painted multicolor bicycle
yet.

The monumental giant tragic squat we're to play at, Tacheles, is
in East Berlin, which is so frantically being transformed by
developers into West Berlin that all forms of transport are
problematic. Three interesting bikes, though: one, a paint-job: deep
dark red with short dark wavy stripes; then, a high-tech,
completely-enclosed-by-white-plastic three-wheeler called a Twike;
third, an otherwise unremarkable girls' bike with a child's seat
cleverly detachable from the upper front of its top-tube.

Bremen, perhaps due to its proximity to Holland, has a ton of
bikes, many of them older models. Here's a gossamer tall-bike so
excellent I make a drawing of it. There's a trailer, home-made out of
a pair of front-forks; a pretty, multi-color worm-squiggles
paint-job; and a tandem, manufactured to accomodate a child in front,
an adult in back. On the wavelength I guess, I find a huge bike-fair
in progress at the central square, but note nothing unusual, barring
the fact of the bike-fair itself and the exceptionally unusual square
itself. Down to the river Weser, the signs directing one to the
bike-path consist of tiny models of a old-style high-wheel
penny-farthing. Way charming.

In Essen are the first helmets I've seen so far in Europe -
the Dutch bike-cops didn't even wear them. Here is a bicycle rigged
to push a wheel-chair. The NBA basketball game announced in hilarious
German/English and broadcast live from Utah gets along without a
network feed, so at half-time, instead of the usual lame interviews
and car commercials, we can see what is actually happening at the
arena in Salt Lake City: a crew of teen-age BMX-bike trick-riders
showing off their energetic amateur stuff. (3 days later, the
fledgeling Austrian break-dancing crew that follows our set, Nobody
Rockz, exactly will remind me of these boys.)

Enger, our last engagement in Deutschland, is a wee village. Many
Europeans ride in skirts or dresses, and you frequently see a simple
treated-fabric or mesh cover over the top third of a bike's rear
wheel and attached to the fender, to keep one's hem out of the spokes
- a skirt-guard. And here is a lovely specimen of same, made of woven
white elastic laces - very handsome.

Austria to Euskal Herria

Here in Linz is a small child on a tricycle which is attached to a
long wooden handle held by her mom walking behind.And here is
a young woman riding gracefully to an appointment - a cello slung
across her back.

As in Amsterdam, Linz and Vienna are equipped with some old stone
staircases with narrow channels running up (or down) next to them for
bicycles. Is this civilization or what? Our Vienna night-club, called
Flex, faces a canal, a hundred-foot wide, 5-mile-long city-center
Danube-offshoot flanked by bikepaths and forbidden to motor vehicles
except those making deliveries, i.e. our van full of music equipment
and the little cars that service the 5 or 6 nearby open-air cafes or
used-book stalls. Here, next to the pedestrian tunnel and stairs to
street level, is a built-in obstacle-course for kids' bikes. A narrow
path painted on the cement curls around on itself and through
15-foot-long painted cement tubes - on my very low bike, I still have
to duck down - up onto painted cement 4-by-4's, through painted
cement hoops, and ending suddenly at a finish-line consisting of the
English word: APPLAUSE. The paint is old and eroding away.

Budapest immediately reminds me of Anchorage or Los Angeles: very
few bikes, and you'd better ride on the sidewalk most of the
time. Or you'll at the very least get doored a lot - lots of
knee-injuries: the autos here are SMALL. Of the no more than ten
bikes I see in all of Budapest, two carry riders in full racing
get-up and three are the primitive and futile-looking rent-a-bikes in
the care of a couple of pleasantly shady young men next to the
funicular terminal beneath the Budavari Palota - the royal palace
that contains the National Gallery.

On past Pecs and towards Croatia, in other words, through the
Hungarian southwest, fully a quarter of the many rural and small-town
bicycles are cheap folding-bikes, providing me with a cheap surreal
thrill.

Some of these European borders are easier to cross than between
some states. Anyway, suddenly we're in Slovenia, it's another lateral
culture-switch, and Macbeth whispering to me: Is this a bike-lane
that I see before me? Ljubljana is a serious cyclist's delight - I
manage to forget myself amidst the stone byways and get really really
lost.

Rome is even more incompatible with bicycles than Budapest (or
Anchorage or L.A.), but with a startling exception. Even fewer bikes,
even more dangerous traffic, much more treacherous curbs - 12 inches,
sharp, and marble - but a prolific phantasmagoria of little scooters
and lightweight motorbikes invites one to mimic their signature
behavior and body-language - like sitting in a little straight-backed
chair - and so pass for one of them, and safely into the peripheral
vision of the incomprehensibly crazed Roman drivers. Needless to say,
mountain bikes or road bikes, unless equipped with apehangers (high
V-bars), don't lend themselves to this style of riding. Dutch bikes,
high-handled cruisers, and especially my little one-handled bike, are
all well-suited to riding here if you can handle the adrenalin. These
drivers have faster reflexes than you can see.

Don't see a whole lot of bikes in Marseille, but then, all my time
is going to applying patch after patch to one of my tires, after my
rude American odor in a bike-shop compels them to sell me an
obviously wrong replacement tube 5 minutes before closing. But the
German crusty-punks lolling in the steep cobbled alley that fronts
our club are agog at the unicorn Royce-Union once it's up and
rolling.

Now here's the first gorgeous paint-job since Bremen - immaculate
ivory-beige.

In the French countryside north of the central Pyranees - we are
near Lourdes - next to the highway is a
nothing-short-of-hallucinatory monumental tribute to the Tour de
France in the form of a seven-story tall sculpture of a stylized
racing-bike.

Monuments aside, southwestern France and Euskal Herria (NW Spain)
is fanatical bike-racing country. Bike routes are marked with the
blue circle, there is bike lane adjacent to the freeway, a
preponderance of cyclists are in spandex, racing colors, helmets. And
if proof were needed, we are tootling along a major rural 2-lane
highway, when we come around a curve to be presented with this
tableau: the road curves around in front of us, and we can clearly
see some distance ahead a pair of cyclists riding abreast and sitting
upright, apparently to converse, closely followed by 6 or 7 cars and
a couple of semis, all obviously content to dawdle along at 15 MPH
until a straightaway, when they can pass. No one honks, and the
riders feel no obligation at all to scoot over for a few seconds to
let the vehicles pass. (On hearing this retold months later, my
dearest cousin Jacques, no stranger to the region, points out the
obvious - that the drivers in question can be assumed to be cyclists
themselves.)

At the spectacular beach in Plentzia are 20 small semi-circular
blue & white bike-racks.

In Gorliz, an adorable patch-kit for 195 pesetas ($1.50).

In stone Elorrio, a beautiful Olmo road-bike in the window of a
closed and dusty stone bike-shop.

In Bilbo (Bilbao), a great and perfect tromp l'oeil mural
featuring a life-sized bicycle hung with a grocery bag, leaning
against and casting a shadow upon the wall itself.

On the way back across to France on the highway, a cyclist
on a hefty cruiser overtakes us on the right on a downgrade, passes
into the lane in front of us, then signals with his left leg
to indicate his intended turn, glancing back at us to see that we
see.

Completely covered with VERA (the name of this
evening's rock-venue) stickers

White with tiny orange polka-dots and little black
X's

Black, with dusky-cream-yellow chain-guard and fenders
(the prettiest of the Groningen bikes)

Orange front, pink back (the ugliest of the Groningen
bikes)

Kicking around Groningen between load-in and show-time, I'm
beginning to fully pick up on the degree to which cycling in Holland
is integrated into every type, every group, from shabby
to wealthy, very young to very old, hip to square.

There is clearly lesser status attached to cars, and the young and
old in particular are in altogether less danger from drivers
long-used to bikes.

In a cul-de-sac of shops in stone buildings, adjacent to the
hugely expansive ancient central-city "square" (hardly any of these -
every urban area in Europe seems to have one - are really square), is
a sandwich board with the words "Boeken Kelder" and an arrow that
points down a steep stone staircase - a book cellar? Not til
returning back up do I see the excellently-sculpted cyclist's
push-ramp on the right.

Now suddenly everywhere I look I'm seeing something that has to
have been there all along: three quarters of all bikes have the
bottom 18 inches of their rear fender painted white. Almost like it's
a requirement.

One of the rotation of five t-shirts I wear in our shows reads, on
the back, "2 wheels - good. 4 wheels - bad", and on the front, under
an icon of a stick-man with a club bashing a car, "CARMAGEDDON". Now,
in a computer-store window, here is a British video-game of that
name. It approaches the question from the opposite angle, though -
the graphics depict a sweat-drenched terror-eyed car-driver.

Here is an undreamed-of integration: several times, in the 18
hours we spend in this country, we see chatty groups of friends
proceeding along the immaculately-maintained bike-lanes and
bike-paths of Leuven (another old university town), leisurely,
conversing as they ride, some on bicycles, others on scooters,
mopeds, or very light motorbikes, putt-putting along.

Belgium is the country on our route most like the U.S., and this
obtains with respect to the range of bikes visible: a diversity of
road bikes, cruisers, citybikes, and mountain bikes. For the first
time on this trip they are commonly displaying their brand names
and factory paint-jobs and decals.

As well as a central square, every European urban unit has a
"central station" that, in addition to being the place from where
radiate trains, trams, buses, and cabs, infallably offers pay phones,
currancy conversion, English language newspapers, 24-hour snacks, and
beaucoup bike-racks. The sheer number of bikes at the central
stations in Leuven and Amsterdam suggests that bike-commuters own two
bikes, one at home and one downtown. In Deutschland, in fact, the
couple of times I brought my folder aboard a train, the conductors
gave me dubious looks, as if I was somehow cheating.

Leuven Central Station paint-jobs:

Pink with dolphin stickers

Blue-green granny bike, with olive granny- and
down-tubes

Red with navy-blue squiggly worms

Turquoise with red stripes

Turquoise with 3 strategic yellow stripes

Forest green with 3 strategic yellow stripes

2" stripes: blue, red, yellow, green

All white

Dark green with black spiral stripes

Lime green frame, stem, and bell, all else purple

All light orange

All light green

All pink

(Many more beautiful solid colors)

Blood red with light yellow scratches

Blue, with red horizontal twin top-tubes

Yellow, red, green, and blue - flowers, leaves, and
sun

Olive green with dark green moments

Beautiful dark-green Magneet (made a drawing of this
one)

And there are several bikes completely covered in stickers, and,
as in Holland, a veritable horde of very old upright black bikes.

And finally, back in Amsterdam:

Light-yellow with black scratches

Black, with 'Garfield' sketches all over the
skirt-guard

Pristine gray with sparkling chrome fittings

Pale gray-green with gold hyphens

All Teal

Purple, with blue fenders and granny-tube

Red, with pink fenders and granny-tube

Light-green, almost worn away, over black

Yellow, almost worn away, over black

Light blue-green and yellow, fading

Purple with black checks

Red with a white rack

Blue, with meticulous white stars

Light pink, fading to black

Red, with little white spots

Blue, with light-green fenders, seat-tube, and bell

Impeccable light slate-green

All pale-green: seat, pedals, everything

Other than mass-oddities like granny-bikes, paint-jobs, box-fiets
and scads of folders, there are fewer unusually configurated bikes in
Amsterdam than in Portland. I've seen no recumbants (save the one
boxfiet), choppers, tall-bikes, enclosed bikes, or penny-farthings,
and though comparatively many tandems, none longer than a two-seater.
The closest thing to an oddity I saw in Holland was a Batavus
folding-bike with a square (in cross-section) down-tube.

Every large street has a bike-lane, either a colored section of
sidewalk, or in the street, but separated from motor traffic by a
narrow curb. The only real hazards to cyclists are the really quite
rare speeding motorbikes using bikelanes, and at major intersections
the very fast and silent trams and the odd late-model taxi. It 's
quite common to see a cyclist leisurely pedaling down the center of a
street, with a car, even, say, a late-model Mercedes, following at a
comfortable distance, content to get by at the next intersection.

The most charming sight among the Dutch is the smooth grace with
which they accomodate passengers on their bikes. Almost every
bike has a sturdy rear rack, so the pedestrian gently grasps the
rider's hips, runs a few steps to impart a little velocity-boost,
then hops on, side-saddle, with nary a waver.

The most charming sound in Holland is cyclists singing.

The Dutch word for Critical Mass is Autolozen. Literally - Lose
the Car.